Death by Deep Dish Pie (30 page)

“Blackmail, in other words,” Todd said. “I have to admit, I kind of admire that, Dinky. Didn't think you had it in you. But then Alan died of a heart attack, which complicated things about the sale, since that left Cletus and Dinky in charge.”

“So you killed Cletus and now you're going to kill Dinky, just to close a business deal?” That was Sally, her voice raspy with pain, but outraged. She coughed. I wondered how bad her wound was.

Todd frowned at her. “I haven't killed anyone—yet,” he said. “And it wouldn't be just for a business deal. But to save my career. With one more good acquisition, I can move up to the vice president level at Good For You Foods, and leverage that into the CEO job at another smaller company. Of course, then I'd have to look for ways to take over the top spot at a bigger company . . .”

“All that from one business deal?” I asked.

“It's not just the deal that's the problem. Dinky liked the idea of blackmail so much, he thought he could try it on me.”

“You're selling ginseng on the black market through your company contacts!” Dinky blurted. Well, that explained all of Uncle Otis's ginseng business. “Don't you think sooner or later one of those kids Otis hired, after you hired him, will tell someone and then . . .”

Todd whapped Dinky with the gun again. Then he looked at me. “Hurry up, Josie, or I'll just shoot all of you here and take my chances.”

With my right hand, I yanked the left bra strap down to my wrist, and pulled it over my left hand. “Almost done,” I said. “But if you didn't kill Cletus, who did?”

“Dad killed himself,” Dinky said, his voice shaking with sorrow. “Otis didn't tie him up too tightly, and he got free. When he got back to the house the night of the pie-eating contest, he heard about Uncle Alan's death. The next morning I found a note confessing he'd switched Uncle Alan's blood pressure medicine with Asian ginseng pills and he blamed himself for Uncle Alan's death. He hadn't meant to kill Uncle Alan, just to make him sick. He wrote that I should sell the company after all and keep the truth about our family history hidden.

“That he knew Todd was selling ginseng on the black market and I should use that knowledge to protect myself. That I should just take the position Good For You Foods offered me, that he was sorry, but he realized I'd be better off doing that than trying to run Breitenstrater Pies myself. That he was going to the back storage area of his Fireworks Barn to shoot himself. I went as fast as I could to the Barn and found it closed and let myself in with a key Dad had given me. And I found him. He'd shot himself, once, through the mouth, with my gun. He must have gotten it from my room.”

That, I reckoned, was where Dinky must have been the day after Alan's death, while I was visiting Geri at the Breitenstrater mansion.

Dinky started crying, and I realized his dad's change of mind about his abilities hurt him more than anything. Dinky really did think he had what it takes to run a company. At least, he wanted to believe he did. And who knows, I thought. Maybe if he hadn't heard all his life about how he was second-rate compared to Jason, he would have.

“The problem is,” Todd said, “that a suicide like that would bring too much scandal to the Good For You Foods name. Plus I could never trust Dinky not to blab about my little side venture in ginseng. He was such a blabbermouth in college. When Dinky told me what had happened—he came back to the house after you left—he threatened me with the gun that he'd taken from his dad's side.” Todd gave a little shudder. “Gruesome, eh? Anyway, he told me I had to stop the deal from going through.

“No way would I let that happen. I wrestled the gun from Dinky. It was easy. I knew he'd never have the guts to really shoot anyone—unlike me, mind you. I knocked him out with the butt of the gun, got him in the trunk of my car—it was very convenient that Geri was out from those tranquilizers—and went over to the Fireworks Barn, where I rigged the place to explode. That way, I could get rid of Cletus's body and the ginseng, too. I figured an accident like that might still make the deal go through. And I very much need this deal to go through—or my career's over. When I got back to the house, I discovered a note from Geri—she'd gone to stay with her family until Alan's funeral.

“So I tied Dinky up, got the house key out of his pocket, and let us in while I figured out what to do with him. Unfortunately, killing him was the only thing that came to mind. Fortunately, Otis had shown me this place once, and this seemed like a good spot to leave a body.”

“I can run the company! I know I can!” Dinky said. “Todd, let's talk this over.” Ah, so he did understand the value of stalling Todd. “I'll still work with your company—” His voice was strained, pleading.

“Shut up!” Todd snapped.

We'd stalled him about as long as we could. I'd have to think of something fast. “So you really are going to kill Dinky just to save your career?” Sally asked. Her voice was getting weak. I didn't have much time if I was going to save her—and me. And maybe even Dinky.

Todd sighed. “Unfortunately, my dear, it appears I'm going to have to kill three people to save my career.”

I reached with my left hand to quickly snap the bra down over my right arm. I let it dangle from my wrist as I pulled the Breitenstrater mini pie from my pocket and then unwrapped it.

“What the hell do you think you're doing?” Todd demanded.

“The condemned,” I said, “always get a last meal.” I bit into the pie, which was hard and stale. Dang. Breitenstrater quality really had slipped.

Todd stared in disbelief at my chewing, and so he didn't see my sleight of hand: slipping the Breitenstrater mini-pie into my bra cups, holding the straps, then swinging my impromptu sling shot, David versus Goliath style. Todd had just a moment to look surprised before the mini-pie-in-a-bra whapped him in the head, sending chocolate filling dripping into his eyes, all of which caused him to drop his gun, which, amazingly, Dinky had the sense to grab and point at Todd.

But Dinky's hands were shaking badly and Todd was about to lunge at him, so I ran forward, grabbed my kerosene lamp, turned out the flame, and hit Todd in the head. That, fortunately, knocked him down, moaning.

I took the gun from Dinky and pointed it at Todd.

“That,” I said, “should teach you not to make fun of stories like David and Goliath. And not to call small towns stupid!”

Epilogue

It took a while, but eventually everything got sorted out.

Dinky had a cell phone, which I used to call for emergency help. Todd's in jail for attempted murder of the three of us. Sally's home from a one-night stay at the hospital, and her ex-mom-in-law, Bubbles, and I are helping with Larry, Harry, and Barry, while her shoulder mends.

I told Dinky my idea about what to do about Breitenstrater Pie Company, and he actually listened. I reckon the whole incident in the cave really shook him up.

He called a meeting of the Toadfern clan and presented my idea as his, which is what I wanted him to do, since I knew it wouldn't fly with at least some of the Toadferns if they knew the idea came from me.

He said, sure, we could all fight over every decision that the Breitenstrater Pie Company makes, but instead, what if each Toadfern got an upfront bonus plus an annual bonus after that, and the pie company became employee owned? There were enough Toadferns who worked at the pie company or who were related to people who worked at the pie company or who had fond memories of a relative working at the pie company that the idea—sweetened with those bonuses, of course—went over just fine.

Dinky got to take over his dad's old job of new product development at a nice salary. If he ever gets any wild ideas, I'm sure the employees who own the company will keep him in line. Already, the company has stopped cutting corners on quality and sales have started to go back up.

The deal with Good For You Foods was called off, but one of their directors is coming over to be the new CEO of Breitenstrater Pie Company, which is keeping its name, tradition being an important part of marketing those pies.

We had our Founder's Day celebration, after all, just a little late. The parade was as usual.

Trudy came back long enough, after she heard all the news, to pack her things and to collect Slinky so she could move to Chicago with her mom. She told me that her uncle had told her the truth about their family's history the morning of the pie-eating contest. When she confronted her dad about it, he threatened that he'd never pay for her college or support her acting career if she revealed the truth. She was so upset by his threat, she ran away to her mom.

We never found Cletus's play—our theory is he never wrote one, and was just trying to scare Alan—so Trudy wrote the new play and cast all of her friends in it. The play was even put on in the newly renovated Paradise Theatre. Hearing of what happened, and of Sally's shoulder wound, volunteer Paradisites aplenty showed up to work with me to finish the renovation. The play was such a big hit that there's even talk of the Paradise Town Hall Players starting up again.

Trudy's play revealed the truth about Paradise's founding, but no one minded after all, not even the Paradise Historical Society, because Geri decided the insurance money from

Alan's death was enough for her to start over elsewhere, and so in Alan's name she donated the old Breitenstrater mansion to the Paradise Historical Society to display all the stuff that had been, well, stuffed in Mrs. Beavy's house and attic for too long. Geri even donated operating funds to keep the place going for a while, although, already, Mrs. Beavy, who came home from the hospital healthy and energetic and back on her blood pressure medicine, is busily thinking up fundraisers to add to the fund.

Trudy called her play
The Curse of Paradise,
because the play revealed the truth about the founding of our town. The truth was sad and simple: two brothers had fought over their rights to land—but no doubt their fight ran much deeper than that. And one who'd been seeking paradise killed the other, and then in remorse, killed himself. The people who knew them buried their remains, then sought to bury the truth, to turn the truth into a secret.

But secrets take on lives of their own. According to Trudy's play, the secret put a curse on our town—which was whispered about from generation to generation as the Curse of Paradise whenever things went wrong. But now that the secret was gone, and truth was in its place, the curse—if there'd ever been one—would go away . . . at least so said the character of Gertrude Breitenstrater, played by Trudy herself.

Chucky, by the way, played Leo Toadfern. And Trudy and Chucky made up with each other and decided they were better off as friends.

Cletus and Alan were put to rest side by side, in the cracked Breitenstrater crypt. Above ground—but otherwise not so different from the men they'd thought of as their ancestors, buried in the cave.

A few weeks after that, the employee-owned Breitenstrater Pie Company brought in the grandest July Fourth fire-works display Paradise has ever known. No one cared that it was held at the end of July, not even Guy, because I used part of my first bonus, a couple thousand bucks, to buy us special glasses that filter out red. I found them on the Internet, with Winnie's help.

I thought we looked pretty spiffy, Guy and I, in our special red-filtering glasses and earmuffs that looked just a wee bit like ferret fur. Guy laughed and clapped and pointed at all the fireworks, enjoying them more than he ever had.

Sally used her pay plus her pie company bonus as a down payment on Bar-None. (I tried to give her my pay from the renovation, as I'd promised, but she wouldn't take it, saying I oughta consider saving toward a new car.)

Owen and I are spending time together—a little less often and a little less seriously than before, but that's okay. I need some time to get over the fact he kept secrets from me, to see if I can believe that, as he says, he would have told me the truth eventually if I hadn't caught him in a lie. For now, I'm trying to take our relationship one day at a time, trying not to foresee if we'll end up together forever, like the Hapstatters or the Beavys or Aunt Clara and Uncle Horace, or let our relationship fade into friendship, like Trudy and Chucky.

Mrs. Oglevee hasn't shown up in any of my dreams lately. I thought I'd never say this, but I wish she would. I have a suspicion that years ago she discovered Gertrude's diary and knew the truth about Paradise's history all along, and that's why she taught local history in such a bland way and why she wrote the original Paradise play. I want to ask her about this. Which is probably why she's so stubbornly refusing to show up.

And with all the stuff moved from her house to the Breitenstrater mansion, Mrs. Beavy had room for a new washer and dryer.

We still get together every now and then, for her homemade buttermilk pie (better than even the employee-owned Breitenstrater Pie Company could make) and a glass of red wine, which, for the record, taste just fine together.

But the other day, when I asked Mrs. Beavy for her buttermilk pie recipe, she just smiled at me and said, “Dearie, that's an old family secret.”

PARADISE ADVERTISER-GAZETTE

Josie's Stain Busters

by Josie Toadfern
Stain Expert and Owner of Toadfern's Laundromat
(824 Main Street, Paradise, Ohio)

Not only was last week's fireworks display the best ever (a welcome treat after the tension of the past few weeks), but the new play,
The Curse of Paradise,
was a theatrical treat!

Congratulations to Trudy Breitenstrater, for writing a fine play, and to her friends, for super performances. Since the play received a standing ovation, I hear that there's now talk of bringing more theatre to Paradise. In fact, some customers have told me that former members of the Paradise Players are thinking of starting a mystery dinner theatre group. Hmm . . . murder mystery and dinner with pies from the now employee-owned Breitenstrater Pie Company for dessert? Make mine apple!